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My Favorite Black Podcasts…As of This Moment

For the last three or four months, I’ve gotten into listening to a lot of different podcasts. I mean a lot. Topics range from ratchet to intellectual but whether I stick with it depends mainly on whether I like the hosts and all of the hosts of my current favorites are African-American. Here’s a short list. The Read. The Read is the gold standard in pop culture podcasts. Kid Fury’s random anime references give me life (he called the Tidal press conference the “Kage summit“) and Crissle’s reads are flawless. But the “Black Excellence” segment is probably my favorite because they highlight African-Americans and people from African countries doing big things. With so many negative things going on out there, I need to know about the positive people they’re showcasing.

Another Round. Another Round stars Heben and Tracy mostly having drinks in the studio and shooting the breeze with well-known entertainers, authors, and other glitteratians and intellectuals. Tracy writes hilarious posts for Buzzfeed and that humor comes through in her podcasting style (or vice versa). Heben is her slightly younger wingwoman, who’s quite funny in her own right. My fave episode so far has to be their interview with Audie Cornish.

FanBros. Surprisingly, FanBros is the only nerdy/geeky podcast I listen to on a fairly regular basis. Claiming to be “the voice of the urban geek,” the hosts DJ BenHaMeen, Tatiana King Jones and Chico Leo cover a wide range of fandoms and try to do so without being too spoiler-y. Their guest list is amazing: the Ta-nehisi Coates, Jay Smooth and Junot Diaz episodes are my personal favorites.

PostBourgie. I love to hear smart black people talk about things smartly with some curse words thrown in for good measure. Gene Demby’s PostBourgie podcast is great for this. Demby is on NPR’s Code Switch team and brings in a bunch of his edumacated black pals to have nuanced chats about a variety of topics (the “nuanced” part is very important).

Denzel Washington is the Greatest Actor of All Time PERIOD. I love Denzel Washington and Denzel Washington is the Greatest Actor of All Time PERIOD talks about all of the things that make him awesome. Hosted by W. Kamua Bell and Kevin Avery, each episode breaks down a Denzel Washington movie and rates it. The two comedians make a ton of jokes (mostly at Kevin’s expense) and come off as total Denzel stans. They’ve even spawned some super fans who run a website and Twitter account for them.

There you have it. Do you have any favorites? Drop those gems in the comments section because I’m running out of well-run black podcasts to listen to!